Things In Politico That Make Me Want To Guzzle Antifreeze, Part The Infinity

Most of their candidates were crushed this year, even as their party won big. Now, many tea party activists are embracing a strategy for 2016 that's strikingly at odds with the movement's take-no-prisoners approach. It's time, they say, to show a little restraint.

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What's that you say, President Jed?

That's what I thought.

Do continue, though, young Padawan.

Though many of the conservatives noted that just the threat of a primary challenge can pull a mainstream Republican senator to the right, some questioned the wisdom of targeting relatively reliable conservatives this year, such as Kansas' Pat Roberts and Kentucky's Mitch McConnell. As a general rule, they said, the tea party should only go after Republican incumbents who are to the left of their state's electorate. They mentioned New Hampshire's Kelly Ayotte, Illinois' Mark Kirk and Pennsylvania's Pat Toomey - Republicans representing liberal or moderate electorates - as senators up for reelection in 2016 who may deserve a pass on those grounds.

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First of all, and we won't dwell on this at length, but the whole thesis here depends on the gray-bearded myth that there ever was a substantial and relevant difference between an entity called "The Tea Party" and another, larger entity called "The Republican Party," or that there is a substantial and relevant difference between a "Tea Party agenda" and a "Republican agenda." The election of people like Thom Tillis and my new friend Joni Ernst do not make that myth true any more than the defeat of Richard Lugar or the nomination of Christine O'Donnell did. Enough of that for the moment, though.

It was a miserable year for the tea party, with its highest-profile candidates all losing to establishment-backed incumbents. In Kansas, Milton Wolf, a doctor and distant relative of President Barack Obama, was roiled by a professional scandal and lost to Roberts. In Mississippi, conservative challenger Chris McDaniel bested Republican Sen. Thad Cochran on primary day but fell short in a runoff that still has the right crying foul. In Kentucky, Matt Bevin was crushed by McConnell despite tea party support for the challenge. Alexander, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and Texas Sen. John Cornyn also survived feeble tea party-backed challenges.

Meanwhile, the entire incoming senatorial rookie class -- Ernst, Tillis, Cory Gardner in Colorado, James Lankford in Oklahoma, Ben Sasse in Nebraska, Dan Sullivan in Alaska -- is much more conservative than the average Republican newbies would have been 10 years ago. (Sasse and Ernst both won Republican primaries specifically as Tea Party alternatives, and Scott Brown lost to Jeanne Shaheen because his conservative/Tea Party bona fides were as weak as his credentials as a New Hampshire man were.) The fact that these folks were able to repackage themselves effectively enough to win isn't an indication of a weakening Tea Party. It's an indication that the conservative consultant class is getting a lot sharper than it was in 2012. (There is no ideological distance between Ernst and O'Donnell. Ernst just listened to smarter people.) And let us not ever get into the new 2015 model of wingnutsthat are going to be rolled out in the House of Representatives. That the Republican leadership will have to wrangle these people away from filing bills based on what they are receiving through the fillings in their teeth is hardly an indication that the grown-ups are back in charge of the party. It just means the leadership will have to work a little harder. In January, almost every single potential candidate for the 2016 presidential election will go to Iowa to pay homage to Steve King, a xenophobic screwball who represents a few thousand farmers. This is not simply "appealing to the base." This is a matter of simple survival.

The persistence of this myth among our elite political press owes its salience to the reluctance of the elite political press to admit that one of our two political parties has gone insane, that the prion disease it acquired when it first ate the monkeybrains 30 years ago finally has eaten away the party's higher functions. It also owes its salience to the reluctance of the elite political press to admit that there is a deep and abiding affection among a huge portion of the American people to vote for the crazy and against its own interests, that the political Id is still the best campaign manager you can find, and that, out in the states, the legislatures are designing a system that will make that situation permanent. It is very hard to admit all this. It shakes the comfort zone. It makes condescending bedtime stories about the greatness of the system and the wisdom of the people sound childish and silly. After a while, it becomes harder and harder to admit that the horse race you so love to cover is fixed from the starter's bell.

Bartender, a double Prestone, and see what the pundits in the backroom will have.

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